The Regiment was 100 strong, and was divided into eight Companies, so that the Battalion had four Companies. Hence we find that Battalions in foreign armies have always had four Companies, putting on one side the Grenadier and Light Infantry Companies, which were added later, as described on page [190]. The British Regiment, which was not divided into Battalions, kept the eight-Company organization of Gustavus, and, when eventually a second Battalion was added, it kept the same number of Companies.
The Regimental Officers were those of the Landsknechts—the Colonel, the Lieutenant-Colonel, and the Sergeant-Major or Staff Officer, called later the Major. Four Surgeons were added to the Regimental Staff, which was a new departure, as up to this time medical arrangements had been the concern of the Captains only.
The Company comprised 72 muskets and 54 pikes, and was divided into six Sections, each under a Corporal, four being of musketeers and two of pikemen. The two Sections of musketeers on each flank formed a new fighting unit, the Platoon (French peloton, a little bundle), which could act independently of the rest of the Company under the Lieutenant or Ensign, while the Captain commanded the two centre Sections of pikes. When pikes were eventually given up, the centre Sections disappeared, and the two Platoons on the flanks then constituted the whole Company. A Platoon thus became a Half-Company, as the Peloton still is in France. Platoon fire (Half-Company volleys) was in use in the British Army till the nineteenth century.
There were thus eight Platoons in the Battalion. We shall find that they still formed the fighting units in the Infantry of Frederick the Great, the Companies being then only the administrative units, although they subsequently superseded the Platoons as the fighting units of the Battalion.
The Company Officers were, as in the Landsknechts, the Captain, the Lieutenant, the Ensign, and the Sergeant. The latter had an assistant, the Second Sergeant, and there were 4 Under-Sergeants, besides the 6 Corporals of Sections. Three Fifes were added to the three Drums in each Company, in which we see the origin of the Drum and Fife Band.
French Infantry
During the wars of Louis XIV., in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the development of Infantry was advanced by the reduction of the number of pikes to one-third of the Battalion, and then to a quarter and a fifth, till at last they were only found in a central group in each Company, so small as to be called a Picquet, or “little body of pikes,” whence the word Picket, meaning the Support of the Outposts, probably because the musketeers furnished the sentries and the pikes the Support.
The pike was replaced in France about 1670 by the bayonet, named after the city of Bayonne, and probably suggested by the habit of the Basques of fixing the wooden handles of their long knives into the muzzles of their guns when smuggling in the Pyrenees. As the musket could not be fired with the bayonet fixed, its use was inconvenient, till the idea occurred about 1700 of attaching it by a ring clasping the muzzle. The British Army adopted the bayonet by 1688. The musketeer had become virtually a pikeman too. The pike, now unnecessary, was abolished in all armies about 1700, but in England it survived for a century in the spontoon, a short pike carried by junior Officers, just as the halberd had survived for Sergeants.
In the French Army, under Louis XIV., we find the Brigade an important unit in the organization of Infantry. Colonels were selected for this Command, which gave an opportunity for promoting the best men, without infringing the vested right of the Colonel to his own Regiment.
One of the early Brigadiers so selected was the famous Martinet, whose discipline has become proverbial. He was Colonel of the Model Regiment formed in 1668, and afterwards Inspector-General of Infantry.